OCLC opens data center in Toronto, Canada

DUBLIN, Ohio, USA, 23 July 2012—As part of a plan to operate local and global systems at Webscale service levels, OCLC is now operating a new data center in Toronto, Canada. The Toronto center becomes the fifth international data center in OCLC's worldwide network and will enhance the cooperative's ability to deliver OCLC WorldShare Management Services to member libraries in Canada.

Over the past eight months, OCLC opened data centers in Sydney, Australia, and London, England, while maintaining its two primary operations data centers in the United States. Another data center in Europe is scheduled to come online in 2013.

The Toronto center employs best-in-class technologies to ensure the highest levels of performance, reliability, scalability and cost-effectiveness. It also provides services 24/7 and is backed up by uninterruptible power systems and redundant heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.

In addition, the new center enables OCLC to comply with access and data privacy requirements in Canada and adhere to technical standards that promote the cost-effective, worldwide sharing of information across platforms, scripts, languages and cultural materials.

"How we deliver services to members continues to evolve at an increasingly rapid pace," said Gene Oliver, Vice President, OCLC Global Systems and Information Technology. "The technology needed to accelerate and enhance our product delivery capabilities requires that we deploy a global infrastructure to support our cloud services platform for the world's libraries. The distributed network of data centers is a key component."

"As we celebrate our 15th year in Canada and our membership continues to grow, OCLC once again shows its commitment to the Canadian library community and quickly addresses a need expressed by many leaders in Canada. The new data center also provides a strong technical foundation for implementations of WorldShare Management Services throughout the country," said Daniel Boivin, Executive Director of OCLC Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean.

The new data center will support expansion of WorldShare Management Services, which provide a Web-based environment that streamlines cataloguing, acquisitions, license management and circulation, and offer a next-gen discovery tool for library users.

Both replacing and standing apart from traditional integrated library systems, OCLC WorldShare Management Services enable libraries to share infrastructure costs and resources, as well as collaborate in ways that free them from the restrictions of local hardware and software. WorldShare Management Services also offer the ability to manage collections of print, electronic and digital material from start-to-finish, and the integration of license management features into interlibrary loan processes set WorldShare Management Services apart from legacy systems.

About OCLC

Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing library costs. More than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries have used OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend, preserve and manage library materials. Researchers, students, faculty, scholars, professional librarians and other information seekers use OCLC services to obtain bibliographic, abstract and full-text information when and where they need it. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the world's largest online database for discovery of library resources. Search WorldCat.org on the Web. For more information, visit the OCLC website.

OCLC, OCLC WorldShare, WorldShare, WorldCat and WorldCat.org are trademarks/service marks of OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Third-party product, service and business names are trademarks/service marks of their respective owners.